The Dead
by Smithee
Summary: The life of a forsaken, taking place shortly after the formation of the Ebon Blade. Originally made for a writing contest, but never submitted.


**The Dead**

There's nothing worse in the world than letting sand get into a fresh stout. It's like finding out there's no Greatfather Winter. It takes time, you see, to draw the ale properly. An experienced bartender will pour slowly, and good beers take the longest. The head can get so thick on top that the tender will have to pour in stops and goes so not to ruin it. On busy nights it's even worse, and the rushing bartender will usually only pour it half way, make someone else's drink, and then come back once it's settled. All of this waiting builds up your anticipation. Durotar is a very hot place in the summer, and your average orc will come in to order already thirsty and tired from their work. So to wait so long for a properly poured drink, only to have the wind blow sand into it, well—it kills you.

But it can be worse, especially in Razor Hill, depending on how you react. A regular will either drink the stout as it is, or buy another one. This is the smart thing to do. But if someone comes in for the first time then they'll usually take it up to the bar and ask for another one. This means talking to Ingrid, which is a bad idea.

Most newcomers were usually adventurers using the inn as a rest stop. Everyone hated the adventurers. A career spent killing things and taking their swag created a caste of demanding, impatient thugs. So, if his drink was ruined, such a person would stand straight up and walk to the bar for a replacement.

Such an act meant speaking to the owner, Ingrid, who worked in the back. A typical meeting would go like this: an orc, just back from Outland, walks in to the bar. He hasn't been to Razor hill since his childhood, so he decided to have a drink. The wind picks up just as he gets his mug and he gets a finger and a half of sand where the head should be. He stands up and walks to the table. His armour clinks and clanks, the piles of junk in his bag are even noisier, and his pauldrons are so wide and gaudy that he bumps into about five other people on his way. Inevitably, one of these will be a drunk tauren, also an adventurer, and it takes four of his friends to hold him back from killing the orc—who is only half his size.

The orc reaches the bar. "Hey," he says to the troll behind the counter, who is usually busy with someone else, "yah you, cannibal lady, pour me another one of these," he slams the mug on the table. It splashes everywhere.

"I'll have to charge you for the second one." The troll says, hiding her disdain behind her thick accent. She's seen this before.

"I'm not paying a thin copper for it. Just give me another beer."

"I can't do that for you, sorry."

"Oh you'll be sorry alright, who's in charge here?" He thinks he can bully the owner. He thinks that the bar owes him a replacement because they don't have a proper door—or something.

The troll smiles, she knows exactly what's going to happen next. "That'll be Ingrid, she's in the back."

"Then go get her."

"I can do that, but it's not gonna do anything for you."

"Listen here, you get me that Ingrid lady or I'll cut you where it'll never grow back, you understand?"

The troll sighs and agrees. She goes into the back room and returns a couple minutes later with Ingrid behind her. The orc sees her and a shiver goes through him.

When Ingrid enters a room strange things always happen. The candles flicker and dim, the temperature goes down a little bit, and the wind outside stops completely. Everyone looks at the door and sees her.

She steps out into the room, an old woman with a harsh face and thinning hair. She is also very tall, like an elf, and she speaks with a voice that is both raspy and commanding. She was human once, but she could remember little of it. Now, forsaken, she become a wanderer. Only in this hole of a bar, filled with the orcs that had once been her enemies, had she settled down. Death and rejection had made her a harder person that any adventurer.

"Ok, who was it?" Says Ingrid to the troll.

"Him," the troll points to the orc.

"Yes," the orc clears his throat and tries to look impressive. He fails. "I came here for a drink, and now it's sandy. Your door doesn't keep out the wind. Give me another one."

"You want another drink?"

"Yes."

"Do you think we run a charity?"

"No but-"

Ingrid stands up tall over the orc. Ribs poke out under her shirt and her jaw hangs loose on her skull. You can see her joints creaking under bones pulled by muscles that no longer exist. Her voice is like a spell. Everyone who hears it tries to run afraid. A magic user would have to train for months to learn such a spell, even longer to master it. Ingrid could do it naturally.

Terrified, the orc stands up and leaves without drinking his stout.. He will probably have many more drinks, most of them without sand. He may live a long life, attaining glory on the battlefield and dying of old age surrounded by his trophies. More likely though, he'll die nameless and faceless while fighting in a worthless war. Such is the fate of a hired sword.

Ingrid would not die so easily. She came to razor hill and bought the inn for cheap just after the corrupted blood plague, which ravaged Azeroth and drove everyone away from the cities—and left the taverns empty and the streets filled with bodies too numerous to clear away. Even though she bought the inn from a desperate seller—an old orc trying to escape south with his family—it cost her almost all the money she had.

A ghoul had killed poor Ingrid when the Scourge sacked her village. Back then she had been the wife of a merchant, and the sister of a paladin. Neither of those things mattered when a necromancer raised her as a slave, and mattered less when she regained consciousness in a tomb outside the Undercity.

Returning to life on a stone slab, it did not occur to Ingrid that any time had passed. Later, her memories returned in bits and scraps. She saw the open mouth of a ghoul clamping against her neck, she saw something like her trachea come away in its teeth. She saw another ghoul gnawing a human foot that looked a lot like hers—but couldn't possibly be. Then she closed her eyes and opened them again, and believed that she had passed out just before help arrived to save her.

When she learned her fate, she fell immediately into madness. She ran into the woods and hid for days in a cave, eating and drinking nothing and wearing only scraps of cloth. It was on the fifth day that she took inventory of her corpse to see what was left of her.

Speech came difficult—though she tried to use the common tongue no human could have understood her. She was missing her left leg, which the necromancer had replaced with a fake one. Several bones had broken and fallen off, she only had one eye, and her lower jaw was crooked. These were in addition to the rotting and atrophy that is common in a reanimated corpse.

She did not want to live, but didn't know how to kill herself. On day six she tried throwing herself to some wolves, but her smell repulsed them. She could not starve or go thirsty, she didn't drown after twenty minutes underwater, and there was no cliff she could find that was tall enough to jump from. In wandering, she spotted a monastery of the Scarlet Crusade and considered sacrificing herself to them, but her bits of human memory told her of the tortures they inflicted on captured undead, which could go for months before they finished their victim off. After ten days, Ingrid went to Brill.

The town had a process for putting newcomers to work. After a kind word and a bit of mouldy cheese, the first thing they gave Ingrid was a job as an alchemist's apprentice.

From apprentice to journeyman Ingrid worked. The toils and abuse her master gave to her helped her forget what her life had come to. She wasn't happy, but not once did she use the many poisons she created to end herself—which was an improvement.

Then the scarlet crusade attacked Brill and killed her master. Ingrid escaped into the Undercity, where they did not dare go, but the end of her apprenticeship meant idleness and time to think about what her life was like.

The forsaken are hard workers; they toil almost mindlessly at their task and continue without rest at a rate unthinkable to the living. There is a very good reason for this. A ghoul's place in the world is a bleak and hopeless one. Any forsaken with the time and intelligence to contemplate their life's meaning will immediately fall into an existential funk. So the forsaken work constantly—not just to revenge themselves on the Scourge—but also to forget that they are lifeless aberrations without purpose in the world. Now, without work, Ingrid was idle and contemplative.

To forget her fate, she decided that she should remove herself from her fellow abominations. She took her possessions and what little gold she could find and took the zeppelin to Durotar. There she found the desolation of the plague, now in remission, and the desperate innkeeper. She bought the inn at Razor Hill and worked there, ignoring the hate and distrust and miserable patrons while she kept busy with unending work it took to keep the place in business.

The inn was a small one. Like most buildings in orc country it lacked a proper door. Instead it had a flap of animal skin that let in the fresh air, but also the sand and dust. The bar was almost always full by late afternoon. It was a strange clientele, fathers bringing sons for a first drink, half-mad regulars spouting nonsense and talking to their mugs, and upstart adventurers who would be dead in a week. None of them saw Ingrid, who worked in the back.

As the years continued, Ingrid's memories returned. The scraps of recollections were like veins of gold scattered across a mineshaft. She would plough away at whatever job she did, walking past miles of useless mental rock. Then she would spot a small yellow glitter and, exploring it, find an endless shaft of valuable memories. This happened whether she wanted it to or not. On a day hotter than most, the warchief Thrall brought her unwillingly to such a vein when he announced an expedition against the Scourge's northern stronghold.

The memories were about her brother. She had almost forgotten him almost completely. From the time she awoke he had existed as a mental shadow that floated in the blank spots of her recollection. He was a paladin and had gone off to fight the undead. For a long time that was all she knew.

Then Ingrid heard of the new offensive, and the events that lead to it. There was a word in the news that she had not heard for ages. The word was "deathknight." That did it.

Her brother had been part of the alliance's first major attack against Arthas. An arrow had ended him just as the fight began, and only two who were present survived to bring back the news. Ingrid had known about his death and likely enslavement before the attack on her village, but had forgotten it after she died. So it goes.

There was more still along the vein, details about the attack and her last minutes alive. Though the ghouls were mindless, they had a leader with them who could still think well enough to command. The deathknights, the most powerful minions of the Scourge, the creatures who acted as the commanders of the undead forces and who were the hands of Arthas's will. There had been one at her village, and it had been her brother.

The memory smote Ingrid to her knees, and left her inconsolable for hours. He had stood over her, perhaps not knowing who she was, and he had watched his minions tear her apart. His face was the same, but pale and white with undeath. His eyes shone blue in their withered sockets. His voice echoed from his throat as he ordered, "Go, attack, tear them all apart! I want this village razed—leave no survivors."

Now her brother had come to Orgrimmar and Ingrid did not know why. The guards should have torn him apart, Thrall should have put his head on a pike like the dragon's head in the city square.

The day of the announcement, she went to investigate. Thrall stood on a balcony surrounded by guards. Even while sweating under the Durotar sun, their warchief looked impressive. He stood, back slightly hunched, with his braided beard and battleaxes at either side. Two tauren stood next to him, and behind them was Ingrid's brother.

He still had his skin, he still had his face, and his armour shone under the sun in a dark blue. He carried a broadsword on his back which glowed a bright red; his hands were clenched into tight fists. His hair was long, and had gone pure white. Like Ingrid, he did not sweat, and his face was passive and expressionless. Most strikingly, he had the strong smell of rotten fruit, a gift from the people of Orgrimmar given before Thrall could protect him.

To see her brother there, still with his weapon, still with his armour, and still standing and walking when he should be in pieces on the floor, it made Ingrid sick. The people felt the same way. No one would dare say or throw anything with the warchief watching, but the people still had fruits and rocks hidden in their bags and pockets in case they got a chance to use them. One good hit would be worth the punishment.

Ingrid didn't watch the speech, it didn't matter to her what was happening, or where, or why. It didn't matter anymore.

In the days after her brother came back, Ingrid closed the tavern and withdrew further within her home. So many of her regulars joined the fight up north that she couldn't stay in business much longer anyway. Thousands of farmers and workers took their rusty swords and put on their feeble armour. They climbed onto their cheap boats, shouted "For the Horde!" on command, and went off to die in the tundra. The point was to get them up there, the orcs' fighting spirit would give them the strength to win—said the commanders. There was no time to train them, and no money to equip them, the whole thing was a gigantic mess.

In a month, Ingrid had sold the inn. A traveller came from Silvermoon to escape a difficult past. He had sold his possessions, and had just enough to buy the inn. Ingrid was desperate to leave, so she sold it to him. Ingrid headed north.

Beneath the frozen steppes on the southern shores of Northrend, the Horde and the Alliance began their joint campaign against the Scourge. Ingrid chartered a boat and came along in secret. She did not know what she was doing. She could not fight, and was a feebly incompetent alchemist. There was a compulsion within her and she didn't know what it was.

It was strange to come off the boat and see all the people shivering in the cold while at the same time feeling nothing. Undeath had a few advantages. The encampment was busy. Soldiers and workers ran back and forth to gather supplies and construct new buildings. Rarely did Ingrid see someone shout an order. To her it looked as if a disembodied hand floated above them, guiding the work with a point and a gesture while keeping an eye on their supplies and their enemies. Such was Ingrid's superstition.

Ingrid did not take part in the work, but instead wandered about the camp looking for more information. Where were the deathknights? How could she find them? What should she do once she did? In the mean time, Ingrid benefited from her death. She needed little food and no shelter, and so slept in the corners and alleys of the growing base.

It was not searching found her brother, but luck. On the third morning, Ingrid looked up and saw the shadows of a hundred boney griffons each carrying one deathknight. At the head was Ingrid's brother.

The deathknights landed and spread out through the camp. They tried to mingle amongst the men. They were just soldiers and adventurers like they were—they tried to say. But the other men shunned them, some had seen these same deathknights only a few years earlier slaughtering men and elf and orc with no pause or pity. One unfortunate troll even found his dead wife, turned into a ghoul familliar. She had been a vendor. Sometimes, you could hear the words "Me buy, and trade," gurgling out of her throat. The soldier took an axe to her head to end her suffering, and the deathknight did the same to the troll for making him waste the regents to replace her. Relations were becoming tense.

Ingrid, scurrying about the base like a rat, saw all of these things. She waited for several days after the deathknights arrived to meet her brother in person. She didn't know if she wanted to kill him, or talk. Both involved meeting him, so until she did it didn't matter.

After about seven days, the troops were ready for an assault on the Scourge. There was a camp nearby that was attacking the Alliance scouting parties. They couldn't spare the men for an assault, the commanders had hired a group of five mercenaries to go and clear out the camp, and to bring back twenty skulls as proof of the deed. Only their paladin returned alive. Their friends had tried to pull the ghouls in small groups to whittle them down to nothing without alerting the rest. But they drew too many at once. The paladin survived by casting a protection spell on himself and watched the massacre from a distance. The attempt a failure, the commander ceased construction to send a proper attack against the camp. Ingrid's brother remained behind, along with some other soldiers, to keep watch. He stood alone by the docks with a signal flare in his hand. Ingrid approached him.

"They did not take you on the attack." She said.

"They already have many deathknights. My skills are better used here."

"But you are a skilled warrior, it was you that Morgraine chose to bring the message to Thrall, he must respect your skills."

"It does not matter either way. There are knights stronger than me and knights weaker than me. It is he who decides what I am best for. I do as he bids."

"Is that all a deathknight does, the bidding of his master."

"It is all I live for. Yes."

"Was this true when you served the Litch King?"

"Yes."

"Were you mindless, like the ghouls?"

"No, just obedient."

"Could you have chosen not to serve?"

He looked at her; Ingrid could see the empty sockets behind his glowing eyes. He did not recognise who she was. "You are a forsaken, correct?"

"Indeed."

"Do you remember your time before that?"

"Yes."

"You remember your service to the Scourge then."

"I do."

"Did you do things then that you did not wish to?"

"Many things."

"Did you kill people?"

"Many people."

"People you loved, that you would regret killing for all your immortal life?"

"I-," did he know who she was, or speaking hypothetically? Ingrid didn't ask. "No." She said.

"But if you master told you to, then you would have, no?"

"I would."

"So then you know what it means, then, to be a deathknight. For that is all there is. Though I worked to free myself from the Scourge, I have only changed one leader for another. He commanded me to stand by this dock and to release this flare if I see a ship come in, so that is what I do."

"That is all you can do."

"Indeed, it is."

Ingrid could not think of what to say for a while after that. She sat by her brother and watched the tide come in. Then she asked, "May I come with you, when you do go away. I have no one here. You remind me of someone I knew, back when I was alive. Will you let me?"

Her brother agreed, "Yes I will. Yes."


End file.
